Recap | Karen Kraven & Kim McCollum - Virtual Book Club
Session 1
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Karen Kraven and Kim McCollum’s first virtual book club on Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women was centred around themes of labour. The session was structured around excerpts from Boyer’s text Sewing, which uses sewing to discusses the meaning and value of different types of labour, and discussion was generated around essential labour and the importance of creative practices in a time where labour has largely ceased.
After a short period of introductions from the hosts and participants, Karen Kraven spoke about the influence of Garments Against Women on her most recent exhibition, Lull. In Sewing, Boyer alludes to the ever-present but mostly invisible lives that pass through every article of clothing. Moreover, Boyer reflects on the countless hours of labour that bring fabrics from farmers and shepherds all the way down to retail markets and consumers. Kraven reflects on these ideas through her material choice and process. Kraven spoke about her process as experiments in composition, taking the pieces of denim that would ordinarily make a pair of jeans and subverting the structure. The works point to an abstracted, disappearing body, and the results of a work day left unfinished. Both Boyer’s text and the work in Lull formed the basis of the prompts that were given to participants for discussion, mainly centring on the necessity of creative labour and the role of visibility in determining that labour’s perceived value.
After Kraven provided context for her work and her relationship to Boyer’s writing, participants were split off into smaller group meetings to discuss the prompts. Topics of discussion were diverse as participants spoke about how the need to stay home has affected their practices and their ideas of productivity. In one group, discussion was formed around academic labour and the challenges that students and professors will both face if courses are forced to be moved online, and shared studio spaces become inaccessible. Switching to online instruction would be challenging for both parties and reverting course marks to a simple pass/fail system undoubtedly brings about questions surrounding the value of the efforts of students. After about 30 minutes of discussion, the group sessions were brought back to the main Zoom call where participants discussed the essentiality of creative labour. Questions arose about whether public perception toward the work of artists, especially craftspeople, would change for the better as most people now have time to explore such practices themselves. On the other side of that, artists across the globe must reckon with the fact that their labour is deemed inessential, and continue to work towards better financial and cultural stability.
After the first club meeting, Kim McCollum provided links to other readings that discussed labour. These included more works by Anne Boyer and an essay by Anni Albers. Perhaps the most urgent question remains: when this quarantine is said and done, will collective visions of labour in Canada and abroad grow to foreground the efforts of the workers who constitute the backbone of society, often for the least pay and recognition?